In a densely populated wireless network, such as a Wi-Fi local area network, there are many users attempting to access the network. In many instances, users are highly mobile and transitory and thus may not use the network for data traffic. However, these mobile users generate many authentication requests and at a high frequency rate. This authentication signaling creates a large overhead load on the network and may cause both backhaul congestion and heavy processing loads on the equipment. For those users just passing through and not running data traffic during the transition through the network, unnecessary authentication signaling is still performed over the air interface. The associations and disassociations occurring during authentication signaling flood the air interface with authentication requests and responses, which results in congestion toward an authentication server such as an authentication/authorization/accounting (AAA) server.